25. TruthConsequences
Chapter twenty-five
Truth or Consequences
Mandy
The silver fork in my hand feels unusually heavy, a polished anchor dragging against the white linen of the tablecloth.
We're at an upscale bistro downtown, the kind of place where the lighting is calibrated for secrets and the menus don't list prices.
The air smells like expensive red wine, seared scallops, and the faint, floral trail of my mother's perfume, a scent that has always signaled a looming scrutiny of my life's choices.
Tonight is the grand finale. The final 'anniversary' dinner before my parents head back home.
For two weeks, I've been living in a curated reality, a high-stakes performance where Sterling Hayes is the lead and I am his devoted co-star.
We've sold the lie with such precision that I've started to forget where the script ends.
“The sea bass is excellent, Mandy,” my mother says, her eyes sweeping over the table with the precision of a high-stakes auditor. She's wearing her 'good' pearls, the ones she only brings out for occasions she deems significant. “You've barely touched yours. Is everything alright?”
“It's great, Mom,” I say, forcing a smile that feels like it might crack my face. My skin feels too tight, the silk of my dress suddenly itchy against my collarbone. “Just enjoying the company. And the wine. Mostly the company.”
I take a bite of the fish. It tastes like cardboard and guilt.
Beside me, Sterling's thigh brushes mine, a steady, warm pressure that should be grounding but currently feels like a live wire.
He's wearing a charcoal blazer that makes his eyes look like a storm, and he's been playing his part with terrifying ease.
He laughs at my father's jokes, actually laughs, not that polite, strained thing Derek used to do.
He remembers the name of my mother's favorite gardenia.
He is the perfect man, and I am the perfect liar.
“I have to say, Sterling,” my father says, setting his wine glass down with a deliberate click against the wood.
Robert Peterson is a man of spreadsheets and risk assessments; he views life through the lens of liability.
But tonight, he looks more relaxed than I've seen him in years, the tension in his shoulders finally surrendering to the expensive Cabernet.
“I was skeptical at first. You know how I am with...
sudden developments. But seeing the two of you these last two weeks...
it's clear. I'm grateful for the man you've become in my daughter's life.”
The words hit me like a physical blow to the sternum.
My father doesn't do gratitude. He doesn't do 'grateful.
' To hear him hand over his blessing so freely feels like I've broken into a bank and found the vault already open.
I look down at my plate, the peas suddenly blurred by a prickling heat behind my eyelids.
I'm not just lying about a boyfriend; I'm lying about my father's peace of mind.
I'm building his happiness out of something I invented three weeks ago.
“Thank you, Robert,” Sterling says, his voice low and sincere.
He doesn't look at me, but his hand finds mine under the table, his fingers interlacing with mine.
It's a practiced move, one we've done a dozen times in front of them, but tonight his palm is damp.
“That means a lot coming from you. Truly.”
His calluses graze my knuckles, reminders of the fire, the hoses, the heavy lifting of his actual life.
For a second, I let myself believe it. I let the performance bleed into the truth until the edges are gone.
This is what it would be like if we weren't a project or a charade.
This is the version of my life where I don't have to hold my breath every time the phone rings, waiting for the facade to crumble.
My phone buzzes against my thigh.
It’s face down on the seat beside me, because my mother has opinions about phones at dinner, and I turn it over under the lip of the tablecloth the way I have turned it over roughly four hundred times in three weeks, in the reflexive half-second hope that it is the landlord.
It is the landlord.
Unit 3C. Available Monday. Please confirm receipt.
Not my apartment. My apartment has plywood over the windows and a red notice on the door and a question mark where the kitchen used to be, and it is not going to be anyone’s apartment for a long time.
But he owns four buildings in that neighborhood, and one of them has a one-bedroom on the third floor that somebody vacated at exactly the right moment, and as of Monday it is mine.
Monday. My parents fly home Sunday.
The timing is so tidy it feels arranged.
I put the phone face down on the seat and I don’t say anything.
There is a sentence available to me. It is an extremely ordinary sentence. Good news, my place is ready. That’s the whole thing. People say it at dinner tables every day of the year, between the entree and the dessert menu, and nobody’s life changes.
But my father has just told Sterling that he is grateful for the man he has become in my daughter’s life, and he said it with his shoulders down for the first time in about four years.
And if I say my sentence out loud, somebody at this table starts doing arithmetic.
If her place is ready, why is she still there.
And then Monday stops being information and starts being a date, and the whole thing gets a clock bolted to it, and my mother will want to discuss what happens next in a tone that will require me to have answers.
So I don’t say it. For them. Because they are happy and it is their last week and there is no version of this where the truth improves anybody’s evening.
That is the reason. I am being considerate.
There is a second reason underneath the first one, and I decline to go down there and look at it.
I put my fork back in the sea bass instead.
I take a sip of wine I don’t taste. Beside me Sterling’s thigh is still warm against mine and I do not turn my head, and I keep not turning my head for long enough that not turning my head becomes an activity in its own right.
“Well,” my mother says, her voice fluttering with a sudden, sharp excitement that makes my stomach do a slow, nauseating roll.
She reaches into her designer handbag and pulls out a small, navy velvet box.
It's an old box, the kind with a push-button clasp made of brass.
“Since we're being sentimental and it's a celebration... I thought now would be the right time.”
She slides the box across the table. It stops directly in front of Sterling.
The velvet is worn at the edges, a soft, antique sheen that tells of decades spent in a safe or a vanity drawer.
My heart doesn't just hammer; it stops. I am officially in cardiac arrest. The air in the restaurant suddenly feels thin, the oxygen replaced by the heavy, cloying scent of lilies and old money.
“Mom?” I whisper, the word catching in a throat that has turned to sandpaper. “What is that?”
“It was your grandmother's,” she says, her eyes sparkling with a joy that feels like a heavy weight on my chest. There's a mistiness in her gaze that makes me feel physically ill.
“The one she wanted you to have. I've been holding onto it for years, waiting for the right moment.
And looking at you two tonight... well, it would make a lovely engagement ring when the time comes. Don't you think, Sterling?”
Sterling's hand freezes in mine. The warmth is gone, replaced by a terrifying stillness.
He looks at the box, then at me, and I see the exact moment the trap snaps shut.
The ring isn't a gift; it's a shackle. Every forehead kiss, every night in his bed while my parents dreamed of wedding bells twenty feet away, and it all fits in a box the size of my thumb.
I stare at the box, my vision narrowing until all I can see is that navy velvet.
I don't want to see what's inside, but my mother reaches out, her manicured finger clicking the lid open.
The ring is beautiful. It's an antique gold band with a delicate, cushion-cut diamond flanked by tiny sapphires that catch the candlelight.
It looks like history. It looks like forever. It looks like the end of everything.
The math starts running in my head, a frantic, jagged calculation I can't stop.
If I take that ring, if we let this play out until the performance becomes a reality, the stakes don't just double.
They become absolute. If this fails, and things I touch usually do, I don't just lose a fake boyfriend.
I don't just lose the lie. I lose Sterling.
I do the terrible math of loss. Derek took my pride.
He took my confidence and left me questioning my own worth.
But Sterling? If I lose Sterling, I lose the six years of friendship that kept me sane.
I lose the way he knows exactly how I like my tea when I'm stressed.
I lose the person who didn't judge me for my mismatched pajamas or my one slipper.
I lose the one person who truly sees me.
“It's... it's beautiful, Carol,” Sterling says, his voice sounding like it's coming from a great distance. He doesn't touch the box. He just stares at it like it's a ticking bomb. His thumb, still hooked with mine, is trembling just enough for me to feel it. “Really. Thank you.”
“To the future,” my father says, raising his glass, his face glowing with a terrifying, earnest pride. “To finding the right person and having the sense to hold on.”